Student in Class Plagiarizing Egregiously - Be a Snitch?

Post about it on a public message board so he'll be able to figure out who did it right away.

I was joking about the secret ILX user thing. He doesn't read ILX. No one reads ILX.

email him anonymously and tell him you know what he's doing and he should cut it out before you or someone else turns him in

people read the internet. is your name close to "mordy" in real life. if someone fwded dude this thread, you'd be up shit creek.

i say have a mod delete this thread ASAP and then snitch like a motherfucker

contact him anonymously, i tells ya.

not your responsibility to snitch, he'll fuck himself up whether he does or doesn't get caught

Yeah, I am so not worried about him finding this thread.

Even if he does. I'm not worried. He's not exactly the "drug-using teenager" type. (A little referencing other Mordy moral quandaries reference there.)

We basically have to post responses on a board

Does everybody submit their own answers to each question, or does each student pick one question?

why do you even care? how does this affect you?

Because if it's the latter, then the rest of your class is relying on his blatantly plagiarized work.

I think my gut says not to do anything -- if it's as easily detectable as a quick google, chances are he'll get nabbed soon enough anyway by someone whose actual job it is to nab him. (Also I had a bad experience with this sort of snitching in 9th grade.)

XP Neither. Open forum. Post your response to the text we're currently reading.

Turn him in. "Don't snitch" only applies when the administrators of the law have a long history of unfairly applying it/abusing power/etc i.e. the police. There is no code of the streets in a college classroom, unless it's in some dry-ass sociology book.

What happened, nabisco?

xxp

xpost - Yeah, that gut instinct would change if there were any reason, however small, that the quality of his work had a connection to anyone but him and his academic career

(Also I had a bad experience with this sort of snitching in 9th grade.)

Tell this story!

I snitched on a plazerizer in 9th grade too. Dude got mad fuckin' busted.

Tell him you're going to inform the teacher. Give him a chance to fall on his own sword at least.

Just confront him, tell him "you googled that, aren't you worried someone will find out?"

a) my dad's an academic, and if this 'post to a board' deal is anything like the one he has to use, it runs everything through some googlizing plagiarism detector. if statements from the post get hits from internet it lowers the confidence level of the work and the prof can go check it out. so if it's egregious with this guy you might not have to do anything.

b) if this is really on your conscience or pissing you off or if nothing happens, you should say something. i can't decide whether the best thing to do is to snitch on him or say something TO him. either way: http://www.sendanonymousemail.net/

Turn him in. These people piss me off SOOOOOO MUCH.

If the teacher is too lazy to catch this stuff, the student deserves to get away with it.

nabisco I am fabricating quite a wicked story in my head of your ninth grade evil acts!

If the teacher is too lazy to catch this stuff, the student deserves to get away with it.

― Your heartbeat soun like sasquatch feet (polyphonic), Thursday, December 18, 2008 3:52 PM (31 seconds ago)

oh bullshit

Haha what happened in 9th grade was that I was one of very few people in English class who read a certain book over winter break, and I got like a C+ on my paper about it, and then made the grave social error of complaining out loud about getting a worse grade than a bunch of people who didn't even read the book. (This example has zero bearing on the current question but might explain the way my gut reacted.) There was a tense classroom moment where the teacher suggested that if I was aware of anyone not reading the book, I should see her privately and name them, which I pretty obviously was not going to do. Although in retrospect it was pretty hilarious how everyone avoided looking in my direction at that exact moment.

As Spider-Man, he becomes a successful TV star. One day at a studio he refuses to stop a thief, saying that it is the job of the police not that of a number one star. Weeks later his beloved guardian, Uncle Ben, is murdered and an angry Spider-Man sets off to capture the killer. When he does, he is horrified to find that the man is none other than the thief he refused to subdue. Learning that with great power comes great responsibility, Spider-Man becomes a vigilante.[19]

turnitin.com

Somehow the amoral lesson I took from this was "worry about your own grade and keep mum about everyone else unless there's a curve involved"

Seriously, though, the one time I've ever been to Hawaii I spent half the time reading Dickens instead of snorkeling, that C+ can bite me, I was OTM about that book

http://thesexycrimes.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/stop-snitching.jpg

I would never criticize anyone for being bothered by this sort of thing, but I've always been of the opinion that as long as my work is fairly graded on its own merits, I don't care what grades my peers get.

if you're going to snitch, tell him your intentions to his face first. don't be a sneak about it.

why not?

ah nabisco i have so much empathy with your ninth grade self (if that's even a proper use of the english language)

i wouldn't personally snitch, but i might anonymously email him links to all the stuff he's plagiarized. and that's it. no explanation or threats or admonishments necessary.

That's just creepy torture, though!

I mean, it's so "I know what you plagiarized last summer" -- seems like any moral logic should either lead to ...

(a) report it
(b) ignore it
(c) have a man-to-man conversation about it

... and not creepy anonymous hints or half-measures that might come off like overtures to blackmail or anything.

call in the ethicist

as soon as randy cohen enters the room he'll probably break down and admit it

Don't, I don't like that guy anymore. He was so wrong a few weeks back that I almost started getting into an email argument with him about it.

you're right :(

my thinking is that it would just make the person feel like a total asshole and wonder how many folks wre on to him... but yeah, I guess that would seem kinda creepy.

xxxpost to nabiso

... and that was the moment I realized I would never be cool again

I realy don't think the person reporting the offense to the teacher has any ethical responsibility to give the guy a heads-up/free pass and kind of don't get the reasoning - anybody wanna make that case, that the guy is somehow owed an extra here?

J0hn, I think it's just a kneejerk peer-group vs. authority-figure thing

bust his ass

cheaters that get away with it go on to cheat more and eventually REALLY fuck shit up, often not just for themselves.

(Also a half-and-half way of avoiding a real decision, like it's not snitching but it's not letting it slide)

Shakey Mo OTM.

I turned in someone for cheating off of me during a test when I was an undergrad, mostly cause I didn't know the person and didn't want to seem like I was in on it. I waited until after the class and told the TA who pretty much knew what was up anyway.

I also think that someone who's studying for pre-med should be held to a pretty fucking high standard, frankly, undergrad or no.

I agree with most of you and I wasn't saying that anyone has any obligation to protect a cheater. (I voted in favour of snitching FWIW.) I just found it surprising. I think most students would just "let it slide", the way most people would let it slide if someone cheated on their taxes. (A case where someone is cheating off you and highly competitive situations would count as situations where someone has "a vested interest.") When I was in undergrad, I would have been mortified by the thought of plagiarizing myself but it would have also never occurred to me that it was my place to tell on someone else who plagiarized (or e.g. had his girlfriend write his assignment for him). (Actually, the fact that this guy plagiarized everything does change things a little.)

I wasn't saying Mordy's in the wrong, though. He's in the right, really!

Oh yeah. If it was minor paraphrasing, or even if he bought a paper, I wouldn't have done a thing. It's the egregiousness that made it into a dilemma. I can't put the quotes up at the moment, but this was serious lifting. Just copy/pasting of academic articles.

If you don't want to make this a nightmare for yourself, send the teacher an anonymous email with the evidence. Don't tell the teacher or the dude it was you. Watch for the tearz.

Read upthread, he already talked to the prof.

serious lifting
http://www.irrigationfestival.com/images/stories/Events/strongman_640.jpg

When I was a kid, I told on a plagiarist in my English class. He was a straight A student that was terrified of having to write a creative story. So he based his fiction on a Piers Anthony novel that (of course) I had read too. I told on him and I know it probably wreaked some havoc on his reputation as a student, and I saw him head for the school bus in tears, maybe with the first B of his life. Can't even imagine how his parents reacted.

Now I'm a grown up and I wouldn't tell on him because I'm in charge of me; not him. If this plagiarism stays solely in the classroom, then I'd say it's totally victim-less and should just be ignored.

tombot otm how is this a thing?

do it or don't do it; all this fair warning bs is bs.

he did do it already?

tbh i dunno, i got bored reading all the 'on the one hand' shit upthread and posted anyway.

yeah well I TURNED YOU IN

In related news:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/12/19/mark.felt.obit/index.html

next time he contributes anything during class, you should become visibly enraged, stand with legs astride while thrusting a crooked finger in the direction of his face, and scream "J'ACCUSE" in the bloodiest howl you can muster.

then rally the crowd to build a bonfire at his feet, in the middle of the quadrangle.

that will teach him.

next time he contributes anything during class, you should become visibly enraged, stand with legs astride while thrusting a crooked finger in the direction of his face, and scream "J'ACCUSE" in the bloodiest howl you can muster.

rather,

I told on him and I know it probably wreaked some havoc on his reputation as a student, and I saw him head for the school bus in tears, maybe with the first B of his life. Can't even imagine how his parents reacted.

He might possibly actually be slightly better off for having gotten one B in his life.

He might have been better off still if his teacher hadn't given him a B for cheating.

hey guys--im running an internet contest and im pretty sure one of the entries is plagiarized from a newspaper article... should i turn the entrant over to the police?

go ahead

sorry max you need to poll

He was a straight A student that was terrified of having to write a creative story. So he based his fiction on a Piers Anthony novel that (of course) I had read too.

I did this in sixth grade but not with a Piers Anthony novel and not because I was terrified of fiction. I'm not actually sure why I did it, considering that I read and wrote a lot of fiction outside of school at the time - I think it's just because I thought ripping off the basic plot of my favorite novel was a way cooler idea than the ones I had that week. I didn't get caught but felt bad about it for years and never did it again. The end!

A friend of mine couldn't write poetry for 9th grade English, so she turned in "Angry Chair" by Alice In Chains. The teacher pushed her really hard to submit it to a national poetry competition.

ripping off the plot of another story counts as plagiarism?!?!?!?!?

depends how closely you rip it off, it's ambiguous but i think generally you know when you're over the line

I think you could definitely be sued for it. (maybe not successfully but original author would probably have a go.)

guys, good poets borrow, great poets steal. you can quote me directly on that

dudes... no way

I think you could definitely be sued for it. (maybe not successfully but original author would probably have a go.)

― Not Everyone Can Be Tupac (Susan), Friday, December 19, 2008 3:29 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yes, you can be sued. here is the finding nemo example (plaintiff lost in this case) which gives a good idea of the criteria used in U.S. law: http://www.swanturton.com/ebulletins/archive/JKCnemo.aspx

max you have to at least change some details apart from names if you're going to steal a story ;)

Guys, the time frame given here was "as a kid" -- let's not get too impassioned, I'm guessing crying on the school bus home was part of a perfectly adequate life lesson about the importance of assigned fiction being original.

plus a real straight-A honors student would have known to use the 'shakespeare did it too' defense

A friend of mine couldn't write poetry for 9th grade English, so she turned in "Angry Chair" by Alice In Chains. The teacher pushed her really hard to submit it to a national poetry competition.

― kingkongvsgodzilla, Friday, 19 December 2008 15:25 (39 minutes ago)

gold

That's appalling

If the dude aced your class with "Angry Chair"-level posts, please grant him amnesty, for it was not he who has cheated you...

thank you for that angry chair post

I stole something from the simpsons once for some bullshit assignment I had to do about the grapes of wrath

we had to write a song about it or something
the beginning of it was

old tom joad he aint what he used to be
aint what he used to be
aint what he used to be
he understood the socialist philosopy
thats...our...tom

or something, I forget

Well that's a very old song, not Simpsons-original

duh

here's the grapes... and here's the wrath!

xpost

I stole something from the simpsons

all I'm saying is I watched the simpsons and heard some character sing something like that and was like hey let me do that exact same thing

I'm just posting over here

On a personal level, cheating sucks. I was an chemical engineering major for a few years in undergrad but me and everyone else were all cheating the whole way through. At some point I didn't really feel like graduating into something where I was just wasting my time so I stopped.

now I...post here sometimes so uh

Sometimes (often with creative work) there's a pretty wide and blurry space between "cheating" and "being really derivative."

Sometimes there's just, like, not.

And I'd rather not it be known that I was discussing the ethics of snitching on an internet forum.

so you don't want anyone to snitch on you for snitching?

snitchitching